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President Donald Trump appears to be on course to punish the United Nations after the majority of world countries refused to endorse the US President's recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Trump now wants to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) which has received over $5 billion in US aid since 1994. In 2016, the US gave the agency over $368 million.
Comment: Trump is still under the delusion that Israel wants a solution that includes Palestinians.
More from RT:
Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the US has been among the major donors to the Palestinian Authority (PA), created to manage limited self-governance in parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The goal of the aid was to stimulate economic growth in Palestinian territories and build public support for negotiations with Israel.Abbas is having none of this Zionist bluster. A spokesman responded to Trump's tweet with this:
In 2011, when Washington threatened to cut off the aid because the PA was negotiating a unity government with Hamas ‒ considered a terrorist group by both the US and Israel ‒ the PA said it was willing to give up the funding.
"Palestinians need American money, but if they use it as a way of pressuring us, we are ready to relinquish that aid," a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas said at the time.
"Jerusalem is not for sale, neither for gold nor for silver," Nabil Abu Rudainah said on Wednesday. He added: "If the United States is keen about peace and about its interests, it must abide by that." Hanan Ashrawi, a senior executive of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said that Palestinians "will not be blackmailed."
© IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER'S WEBSITE / AFPAyatollah Ali Khamenei
Speaking on Tuesday, the Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered his impression of the protests that have taken place across Iran over the past week, with people protesting against rising food prices and unemployment.
"As for the recent days' developments [in the country], enemies have been united to create problems for the Islamic system by using various means... including money, weapons, politics and security apparatus," Ayatollah Khamenei, as cited by state news agency IRNA.
Without singling out any nation, the Supreme Leader said "the enemies have always been looking forward to finding a chance to deliver a blow to the Iranian nation."
Comment: To some imperialist countries, regime change and foreign policy are more or less one and the same.
UPDATE: Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman fired back at Trump, recommending he lay of Twitter for a while (good luck with that!):
"His confused and contradictory positions on Iranians are nothing new," Bahram Ghasemi said in a statement Tuesday, as Trump was shooting offangry tweets, seemingly to all and sundry.
"Instead of wasting his time on posting useless and insulting tweets about other nations and countries, Trump had better address his country's domestic affairs and issues such as the daily killings of dozens of people in armed clashes and shootings in various US states as well as the existence of millions of homeless and hungry [people] in his own country."
...
Trump's tweets were already being criticized by Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's ambassador to the UK, who also highlighted the United States' domestic problems.
"Trump after his earlier insult in calling the Iranian nation 'terrorists,' has now called Iranians as 'hungry for food.' Very bad to remind him that 1 out of 8, meaning 42 million people including 13 million children and 5 million seniors, are hungry in the US today," the Iranian diplomat tweeted Monday.
"More than 3 months after storm in Puerto Rico, half of the people still do not have access to electricity," he added. "Mr. Trump should be encouraged to work harder to solve the American people's problems rather than focusing on problems of other nations."
© AFPIranian students scuffle with police during a demonstration in Tehran on December 30, 2017
With the world watching growing demonstrations across Iran, the Trump administration sees an opportunity to feed the growing protests. The policy is starkly different than the Obama administration's approach in 2009, when similar protests gripped Iran and were met with silence.
Many viewed the Obama administration's hesitation to back the protests as part of the reason they fizzled out amid a violent crackdown by the Iranian regime, which has engaged in similar tactics as anti-regime activists take to the streets across the Islamic Republic.
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence are said to be closely monitoring the situation and working to warn Iran's ruling regime that "this will not be a repeat of the 2009 demonstrations," according to a senior administration official briefed on the situation.
In the last week, 21 people have died and hundreds of protesters have been arrested. As many of the protesters have openly expressed their criticism of the government, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is blaming the "enemies of Iran" for the outrage, according to a report from the Associated Press.
The start of the protests was economical in nature but has since been morphed - likely with the help of outside state actors - into a full-scale anti-government movement pushing for regime change.
Khamenei claimed that the enemies in question have been meddling with the country's internal affairs. The comments, which were made on Khamenei's official website, according to the report, accused the aggressors of providing money and weapons to protesters-a technique the U.S. and its allies use often.
"In the recent days' incidents, enemies of Iran utilized various means-including money, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatuses-to create problems for the Islamic system," Khamenei said.
© Desconocido
New sanctions are possible, US deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran and Iraq, Andrew Peek, told VOA News. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway confirmed the possibility in a Fox News appearance Tuesday.
Iran is "failing at every level," Trump tweeted early Monday morning, adding "TIME FOR CHANGE!"
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Here at the Duran, our own Alexander Mercouris published a thorough analysis detailing the protests in Iran. Centered in Mashhad, but with sporadic activity apparently extending to other locales, these protests appear to be in reaction to two factors.
The first factor is the anniversary of the December 30, 2009 "Green Revolution", which also started in Mashhad. This is a yearly event, as Mashhad is the home town to the opposition leader Hossein-Ali Mousavi, who campaigned against then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009. This commemoration is part of the political movement now called the Green Path of Hope, and is internal to Iran's own affairs.
Comment: Fort Russ reports more on how the Western media is being used, yet again, to twist protests to suit a 'regime change' agenda:
Further reading: Iran protests die down while riots gain steam, US preps for stage 2 in their information warThe above image has become synonymous with the Iranian protests that have engulfed most regions of Iran for the past week. However, there remains one problem.... The original image has nothing to do with the current protests at all.
The original photo shows a woman with a hijab on a stick in a defiant moment as she challenges the law that makes it compulsory for women to wear a hijab in Iran.
However this was taken before the current protests even began. Although the Islamic Republic forces women to wear the hijab, its slow liberalization is seen, especially with Tehran announcing just days before protests began that they will no longer enforce the law in this regard.
However, despite the current protests being about economic reform and a clampdown on corruption, Western war enablers, particularly so-called activists and Western media, have widely been spreading this image as a symbol for a struggle against the regime that only exists in their own mind and not in the general consensus of Iranians, nor the majority of those protesting.
Saudi Minister of State Ibrahim al-Assaf was spotted at a Tuesday cabinet meeting, doing his job like normal - except al-Assaf was reportedly arrested in November 2017 under allegations of embezzlement and corruption.
Assaf served as minister of finance from 1996-2016 until he assumed his more recent job. He also serves on the board of directors of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company that is thought to be the most valuable company in the world.
Comment: The Middle East Monitor reports that Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah has also been released:
Al-Assaf is the second prominent Saudi official to appear in public after being detained during the purge. On Saturday, state television broadcast images of former National Guard head Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah, another former detainee, alongside Bin Salman. He is said to have paid $1 billion to secure his release.Further reading:
- Saudi purge signals readiness for war with Iran - Trump and Israel in full support
- Saudi Crown Prince's purge consolidates control, eliminates rivals, but puts govt at risk
Former FBI Director James Comey’s Westport, Connecticut Mansion When He Worked for a Hedge Fund from 2010-2013
A three-year span that is not likely to make it into Comey's book is the time he spent as General Counsel of Bridgewater Associates, immediately preceding his nomination by President Obama in 2013 to be FBI Director.
Comment: It seems like any individual leaving the political sphere is obligated to write a book (as if the public has nothing better to read than a heavily manipulated subjective narrative after the fact). But these 'literary masterpieces' are usually more insightful in what they choose not to include versus what they do. See also:
- Luke Harding's 'Russiagate' book provides no evidence and lacks logic
- Not satire: Time magazine names Hillary's 'What Happened' as top Non-Fiction book of the year
- Ex-British PM Gordon Brown's new book: My life, my excuses over Iraq War
- Bruce Hoffman's new book 'Inside Terrorism' is presumptuous and devoid of scholarly value - to say the least
- Barack and Michelle Obama Sign Record-Setting Book Deals Worth Over $60 Million
© AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File"I think it's pretty reprehensible to use that phraseology in any event," James Clapper told CNN. "I guess who that refers to are long-serving civil servants, career civil servants, who are patriots dedicated to the country."
"I think it's pretty reprehensible to use that phraseology in any event," Clapper told CNN. "I guess who that refers to are long-serving civil servants, career civil servants, who are patriots dedicated to the country."
Comment: Isn't that a bit like good ol' Dubya saying "let us not entertain outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the events of September the 11th." Yeah dirtbag, because those conspiracy theories implicate you! Same with Clapper.
Comment: This is the tweet Clapper was referring to:
It is quite significant that the term 'deep state' has been openly discussed by the president of the US himself. It is also laughable for Clapper to argue that long-serving bureaucrats are trustworthy simply because they swore to uphold the Constitution.
Comment: First the Jerusalem vote and now this. The US is clearly losing its dominant position in the United Nations as well as all over the world.